


The Closest Thing

by Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine)



Category: You (TV 2018)
Genre: Background Joe/Love, Choking, Drugged Sex, Dubious Consent, Episode Related, Episode: s02e08 Fear and Loathing in Beverly Hills, First Time with a guy, M/M, Memories vs. Reality, Recreational Drug Use, References to Joe/Beck, Rough Oral Sex, Vague Implications of Incest, Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:54:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23597179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandrine/pseuds/Sandrine%20Shaw
Summary: What happens in Beverly Hills may or may not stay in Beverly Hills.
Relationships: Joe Goldberg/Forty Quinn
Comments: 10
Kudos: 89
Collections: Smut 4 Smut 2020





	The Closest Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scorpiod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/gifts).



The drugs make everything feel more intense. 

The diffuse orange gleam of lamplight. The lingering smell of carpet cleaner and greasy food hanging in the air. Beck's overheated skin under his fingers as he squeezes her throat. The raspy sound of her gasps.

No— No, wait, this isn't Beck. It can't be Beck. Can it?

Beck's dead. Joe killed her.

_You're not special. You're broken. I could never love you._

Forty. Forty play-acting being Beck. _You are the thing that you should have killed._ Forty's fucking script.

Joe blinks and Beck's face morphs into Forty's, his eyes scrunched up and watering, his teeth bared as he struggles to speak. 

"Do it," Joe hears, and he isn't sure if that's Forty talking to him, or Beck, or if it's just a voice inside his head. He should listen to it. Squeeze and squeeze, tighter and tighter, until Forty stops fighting, until he finally stops talking! Joe wants to do it, can feel the frantic beat of Forty's pulse under his fingertips like an invitation. 

But it would break Love's heart, and he's trying – trying so fucking hard – to be good. This isn't being good. Delilah locked up in a box in his storage unit isn't being good. His hands around Forty's neck, choking the life out of him, sure isn't being good.

Jesus. Everything's out of control.

He forces himself to unclench his fingers. They won't obey him at first, each of his muscles and tendons protesting against the motion until they loosen up, joint by joint. Forty's pulse is still rabbit-fast against Joe's skin, and his throat moves as he takes the first deep, shaky breath. Then another. And another. 

Joe feels boneless, exhausted, as if quenching the impulse to choke Forty took up all his energy and now he can barely move. It's the drugs. Probably. Maybe. But whatever the fuck they're doing to him, they seem to do something different to Forty. He's still stretched out on the carpet beneath Joe, right where he tumbled down when Joe jumped him; only now he's grinning, broad and delirious, like this is all a fucking game to him.

The anger returns full force, kicking Joe in the gut and making his knuckles itch to tighten again. 

Maybe Forty sees it. Maybe he can read Joe just that easily, better even than Love. He surges up, and Joe expects being headbutted. He expects pain, sharp, clear. The usual kind of betrayal. But that's not what happens.

Forty's mouth on his is almost more dizzying than a headbutt would have been. Worse, almost, and seconds pass before Joe realizes that he's being kissed. At first he's too stunned to pull back, and then, when the sensation of lips on lips and Forty's stubble rasping against his cheek cuts through the acid haze and he tries to withdraw, he _can't_ anymore, because Forty's hands are holding him in place, gripping his neck like a vice. Joe's lying on top of him, and yet he's the one feeling pinned now. 

It's weird. Forty never seemed that strong before. It throws Joe off, almost as much as the kiss, makes him feel overpowered and out of his depth. He can't break away until Forty pulls back, his head hitting the carpet with a dull thud. 

That maddening grin is still there, emphasized now by how red his lips are, spit-wet and kiss-bruised. Joe wants to recoil. He wants to sink his teeth into that fucking mouth and draw blood. He wants to choke Forty again until his lips turn blue and cold. He doesn't know what he wants, can't _focus_ on a single thought in his head, like everything's adrift, sensations and emotions floating by too fast to grab hold of them.

"Come on, sport," Forty says. At least he's not pretending to be Beck anymore. Small favors. "Just go with the flow. Tripping sex is the best. The acid makes it all so much better." 

Joe shakes his head, as much as Forty's hands allow him to. "I don't want—" 

He doesn't know what he wants to say. He didn't want to do drugs. He doesn't have sex with guys. He doesn't want to have sex with Forty. He especially doesn't want to have sex with Forty while drugged to his eyeballs and being unable to tell where Forty ends and his dead girlfriend begins. He doesn't want any of this.

Does he?

Beneath him, Forty tuts disapprovingly. "No chickening out. I can't let you go through your first trip without it. It completes the experience," he adds, and that's such a dumb, pretentious L.A. thing to say that hysterical laughter bubbles up Joe's throat until he can't hold it in anymore.

"It 'completes the experience'? Are you for real? I never fucking signed up for the experience in the first place, man."

"Shhh. Just imagine that I'm Love. I mean, we're twins, so we're pretty much the same person. And you're going to leave us anyway, right? What does it matter?" 

Forty's smile turns softer, almost a little like Love's smiles. Joe thinks it's probably meant to be soothing, but it only comes across as condescending and patronizing. Funny, he never thought Love's smiles were patronizing until he saw them on Forty's face. 

"Fuck you," he mutters, because it's a stupid argument but he doesn't have the words to refute it. He can't remember ever running out of words before. Maybe this is how writers feel when they have a block, when they stare at a screen or, better yet, an empty page in a typewriter – let's face it, he was always going to be the old-fashioned sort – and no words will come out. 

He's still thinking about this, mind floaty and unfocused, when Forty tugs him down into another kiss and Joe's responding before he makes the conscious decision to do so. 

It's not like kissing Love at all. 

Their mouths might be the same shape, but Forty's beard is rough on Joe's skin, and his lips are less soft and don't taste like sweet chapstick. His breath smells like whatever drink he had in the bar. Whiskey or brandy or something, bitter and weirdly sweet all at once. But he's insistent, relentless, like Love sometimes is, and Joe's helpless against it.

Maybe Forty's right. When this is over... when he finally gets out of this five-star hellhole prison and the drugs have washed out of his mind, he's going to leave. He'll never get to be with Love again. Why not take the closest thing he can get, even if the closest thing he can get is her addict, high-as-a kite, very much male twin. Sometimes you gotta settle, right? It's not a very romantic thought, but then, being a romantic brought him nothing but pain. Or maybe it's the most romantic thought of all... maybe he loves Love so much that he'll even fuck her brother to get close to her.

"Now you got it, old sport. That's the spirit!" Forty says, and Joe realizes that he's been ranting out loud.

"Shut up. Just—shut up."

He mashes their lips together because it's either this or choking Forty again until he stops talking, and he doesn't want to deal with disposing of a dead body while his brain is smushed with LSD.

It's still weird, but it's getting less weird the longer it goes on. The beard's new, sure, but the wet heat of a tongue pushing against his own, that's good, that's nice. Familiar. 

Forty's grip has loosened now that Joe's not actively trying to get away anymore. His fingertips are scraping over the nape of his neck, tangling into Joe's hair, almost like they way Love sometimes touches him when Joe's tired and he has his head pillowed on her lap. It's familiar, and achingly tender.

Someone sobs, wet and pitiful. It takes Joe too long to realize that it's him, that he's crying, tears running down his cheeks that Forty catches with his thumb and brushes them off.

He doesn't resist when Forty rolls them around until it's Joe on his back and Forty stretched out on top of him, his weight pushing Joe into the carpet. He pets Joe's hair and looks down on him with sad, soulful eyes. 

"Oh man, I'm sorry, but we don't have any Moon Juice," Forty says, and Joe doesn't even get it until he remembers Forty's stupid rules.

"I don't want a fucking Moon Juice!" Joe bats Forty's hands away.

He's angry, or at least he thinks he is, but he can't stop crying and the kicker is – he's _hard_. Has been hard since he was wringing Forty's neck, and his dick never went down afterwards. Not when Forty kissed him, not when Joe contemplated all the ways Forty was and wasn't like Love, not when the sobs started wracking his body.

Forty must feel it, too, the way his body is pressing down into Joe's. 

Joe can feel him, too, his hard-on digging into Joe's hip, and that part... that's not familiar. 

He's never fooled around with guys before, simply because he doesn't fool around. He's never been interested in sex for its own sake. That's just not who he is. He wants to fall in love and find the one and be with them. But he's already found the one, and he lost her, _is going to lose her_ because he has to run and leave town. So why not mess around with Forty now?

In his drug-addled state of mind, it makes perfect sense. 

He's dimly aware that normal him – sober him – would disagree. But sober him is locked in a box in the back of his mind that's every bit as secure and inescapable as the box he's got Delilah locked up in, so his opinion is kind of irrelevant right now. He's a problem for tomorrow.

For now, there's only this room, and Forty, and the press of their bodies against each other. 

Forty's grin is brilliant. The lamplight reflects in his eyes, adding to the mischievous gleam as he reaches between them. Joe knows what's coming, but he still jumps a little when Forty squeezes his cock through his pants.

"Shit." He drops his head back against the floor, hard enough to hurt, hard enough to distract from the sharp rush of pleasure.

Forty laughs, loud and obnoxious. "You love it, don't you? Did you get hard this quick when Love got her hands on your dick? Or was it the choking?" Whatever response he sees on Joe's face must be telling enough that his fingers still, before giving Joe a squeeze that's a little too firm, clearly meant to be a threat. "You'd better not be choking my sister," he warns.

"I would never hurt Love!"

Joe's quick, fierce protest seems to be enough to mollify Forty. "That isn't really what I asked, but I guess it's good enough. Now, where was I?"

He keeps rubbing Joe through his pants, and it's good, it's nice – just the right kind of pressure – but it isn't fucking enough. Joe wants more— _needs_ more. Needs to feel skin on skin, chase some kind of human connection, however fleeting and shallow. 

"Come on," he urges, unsure what exactly he's asking for.

Forty shifts and sits back, his weight on Joe's legs as he opens Joe's pants, and Joe acutely misses the sensation of another body blanketing him. He watches Forty fumble with Joe's belt for a moment and feels the impatience sink into every single nerve-ending of his body, itching in his fingertips and his toes. Waiting for something he wants has never been his strongest suit. He balls his fists and squeezes his eyes shut, fighting against the frustration and the urgency.

He loses some time there. Seconds, maybe minutes. 

When he blinks his eyes open again, the soft glare of the lights stings and he feels woozy. His pants are gone, his boxers bunched around his ankles, and Forty's jacking him off with spit-slick fingers. 

Joe raises his head to watch Forty's hand move up and down his cock. Joe's never been so _fascinated_ by something as simple as a hand-job. But the sensation of calluses is foreign, and Forty's hand is so large and rough, wrapping around him with ease, and Joe feels oddly powerless, passive and vulnerable in a way he isn't used to.

Then he makes the mistake of looking at Forty. 

Forty's looking straight back at him, his eyes almost black, pupils unnaturally wide. His expression is hungry. 

"Ever got blown by a guy before?" He doesn't wait for a response, chuckling, like it was a rhetorical question to begin with. "I already gave you your first trip, I guess I might as well make it a package deal." 

With more grace than a guy with as much alcohol and drugs in his system as Forty should possess, he bends down and licks a wet stripe up the underside of Joe's cock from the balls to the tip. The pleasure crawls up Joe's spine and almost makes him arch off the floor, a low groan tearing from his throat.

And then, with a wink and the flash of another wicked grin, Forty wraps his mouth around the flushed, swollen cockhead and swallows Joe down.

 _Fucking_ hell.

Joe all but screams at the feeling of tight, moist heat, the suction, the almost-pain of Forty's stubble brushing against the sensitive skin. 

It's _too much_. Or maybe it's not enough. Joe can't tell anymore. Drugs and arousal and desperation make strange bedmates, a dizzying, volatile mixture. He wants to push Forty off and back away, wants to crawl impossibly closer until they're melting together, wants to hurt Forty, wants to be punished for his sins, wants to close his eyes and forget about it all. 

Forty's a fucking genius with his tongue, getting him right to the edge and keeping him there, and soon enough Joe's pleading and swearing at him in equal measure. And his hands – his fucking hands with those long, nimble fingers, pulling at Joe's balls and brushing at the maddeningly delicate skin behind them, teasingly dipping into the cleft of Joe's ass just as he bobs his head. 

It drives Joe crazy. 

"Fuck, please," he begs, and Forty – that asshole – he's laughing. He's got a mouthful of cock and he's fucking laughing, and Joe sees red.

He reaches up and grabs Forty's head again, tangling his fingers in his dark curls, pushing him down against his cock, making it go deeper until he feels the convulsions of Forty's throat, and fuck, this is better than it was when he had his hands wrapped around Forty's neck.

Forty makes a choked sound of protest that deliciously vibrates against Joe's cock, and he pushes against Joe's hips.

Joe keeps holding on, snaps his hips up, fucking Forty's throat.

He's thrashing more desperately now, and Joe thinks about choking him like this. Thinks about holding him in place until Forty's gone still and silent. Thinks about Beck's face, down in the basement of the bookstore— 

His orgasm hits him without warning, fast and merciless, with dizzying intensity.

His grip on Forty's head loosens, and Forty shuffles back, coughing. The room is spinning. Joe's chest feels tight, his head faint, and the sense of vertigo is overwhelming. 

For a moment, he thinks he sees Love. 

Love, bent over him with her sweet smile and her gentle eyes. The room is different too: a sun-flooded suburban bedroom, clean and pastel-colored. Somewhere, a baby is crying, and Joe realizes he's crying too.

 _Shhh, it's okay. Don't worry. I laced your drink. You're gonna be fine._ Her fingers tenderly brush his sweat-matted hair from his forehead. _I wolf you. You know that. Always. I just want to know what it was like when you fucked Forty. I need to know all the details. I have to know, Joe. I have to know. You understand that, don't you?_

It makes no sense. Love would never drug him. She's not like Forty. She's a good person. She's not broken like him. 

Joe tries to focus on her, tries to tell her, tries to _understand_. But the vision becomes hazy, and then he's back on the floor of the hotel room.

Forty's sitting next to him, holding out a glass. "Welcome back, sport. You were out for a bit. I got you a Moon Juice."

What the fuck? How much time did he lose?

He gingerly sits up. He's wearing his boxers again, but they're stained and sticky. His pants are still missing. 

Forty pushes the Moon Juice into Joe's hand insistently. When he reaches out, Joe instinctively pulls back. For a brief moment, Forty almost looks... hurt. It's an uncharacteristic, ill-fitting emotion on him. Joe's so distracted by the sheer wrongness of it that he holds still when Forty's hand cups his cheek.

"Your first trip! You made it!"

He cheerfully sounds like Joe not making it had been an option he'd considered and accepted as a possible outcome. Joe wants to be angry, wants to be furious, but he doesn't have the energy for rage. 

He doesn't even have the energy to flinch when Forty leans in and presses a noisy, wet kiss to Joe's forehead. 

Forty claps his shoulder and stands. "Come on now, we still got a script to finish."

End.


End file.
